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Fifth paying tourist docks with space station

The incoming and outgoing crews of the ISS gather to speak with Russian space dignitaries after the Soyuz docking

(Image: NASA TV)

Space tourist Charles Simonyi shows off his space legs after arriving on the ISS

(Image: NASA TV)

A pair of cosmonauts and a paying tourist safely reached the International Space Station on Monday.

The Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft, which had launched the trio from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Saturday, docked on time at 1910 GMT (1510 EDT). The hatches between the two vehicles opened 80 minutes later.

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Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov are embarking upon a six-month stay aboard the ISS. “This is our new home and we’re already beginning to like it,” one of the cosmonauts told mission control after arriving at the ISS.

US businessman Charles Simonyi sat in the Soyuz’s third seat. The former chief architect of Microsoft paid between &dollar;20 million and &dollar;25 million for a planned 13-day trip into space.

Ride home

Simonyi will return to Earth on another Soyuz capsule on 20 April. That Soyuz will also bring back outgoing ISS commander Michael Lopez-Alegria and Russian flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin.

Lopez-Alegria recently broke the 196-day record for longest single spaceflight by a US astronaut and will set a new record of 214 days when he lands. He and Tyurin launched into space on 18 September 2006.

She is supposed to return on the second shuttle flight from now, but the current shuttle launch schedule is in flux due to hail damage to the external tank of another shuttle (see Damage from hailstorm delays shuttle launch “Sunita, we’re still working on your ride home,” a NASA official told Williams after the docking. She responded by giving a ‘thumbs up’.

Domestic diva

Domestic celebrity Martha Stewart was in the Russian mission control room to witness the docking of her friend, Simonyi.

“The launch was beautiful, Charles. This is Martha,” Stewart radioed to him. “We all think that you are intrepid, a pioneer, and above all, guess what? You’re out of this world.”

Simonyi is tracking his training and space flight on his blog. “I made about three to four hand-written pages of notes,” Simonyi says of his Soyuz flight. “I’m just very anxious to transcribe them. I wrote down probably every interesting moment of the flight.”

Special delivery

He is flying under contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency through the firm Space Adventures. He is the fifth civilian to make such a Soyuz flight to the ISS.

Also on Monday, NASA announced it had modified its contract with the Russian space agency for crew and cargo delivery to the ISS.

The additional &dollar;719 million to Russia will pay for rides for 15 US crew members from 2009 to 2011, as well as 5.6 tonnes of cargo. This price also covers 1.4 tonnes of outfitting hardware aboard the Russian Docking Cargo Module, which is scheduled to launch in 2010. This final act will free up space that was reserved on a space shuttle flight.